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The concept of ‘‘Object relations’’ in psychoanalytic writings means relations with significant others and their internal representations, starting with infancy and the mother (‘‘object’’ in psychoanalytic writings always refers to another person). Primitive, early, object relations are the starting point for personality development. Whereas, for Freud, the drive-based quest for sensuous gratification conditions the structure of the personality, object relations theorists argued that the individual seeks relationships before seeking gratification. The pattern taken by the individual’s relationship with others, internalized during early childhood, structures the adult personality as well as adult spirituality. What is known as psychoanalytic object-relations theory represents the psychoanalytic study of the nature and origins of interpersonal relations, and, more significantly, of the nature and origins of internal, unconscious, structures deriving from interpersonal contacts and experiences. Present interpersonal relationships are regarded as the reactivation of past internalized relations with others. Psychoanalytic object-relations theory focuses upon the internalization of interpersonal relations, their contribution to normal and pathological personality development, and the mutual influences of internal fantasies and the reality of interpersonal relations. Individual personality is formed through object relations patterns which are set up in early childhood, become stable in later childhood and adolescence, and then are fixed during adult life. The functioning of the adult personality depends on the maturity of one’s object relations. Object relations theorists propose that the ego, which is the center of the personality, seeks objects, and this is the basic drive animating the human personality. The role played by the mother’s constant presence during the first
stages of life makes it the factor around which personality is organized. The mode by which one manages one’s dependence on and differentiation from the mother is the structuring force of the individual mind. Psychoses and neuroses are accounted for by the complications of parental care rather than by eruptions of repressed desire. Motivations experienced by the individual’s body alone are thus deemphasized, and, correspondingly, the formative significance of relating to others is played up. Sexuality is demoted to a secondary role. It may complicate the relationship with the object, but it does not by itself constitute that relationship. Body sensations carry messages, but are not equivalent to the contents of these messages. Communication is channeled through the surface of the body, the sensitivity of which intensifies with the child’s age. At all stages, bodily sensation is a means rather than an end of communication. While classical psychoanalytic theory viewed the personality as an information processing system, in touch (or out of touch) with reality, in object relations theory the emphasis is on internalized and projected ideas, leading to a to
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